Stop this Marathon madness

And Oakwood Beach resident cleans up. Even as Staten Islanders and other New Yorkers are still reeling from the devastation of Sandy, the mayor and th e New York Road Runners insist the New York City Marathon should still be held. Staten Island Advance photo

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and event organizers are saying that the New York City Marathon should go on as scheduled on Sunday - come hell or high water.

It’s good for the city, they say. It shows we’re resilient.

They can’t be serious. What it really shows is that these people, hung up on “big-event” fever, have a tin ear.

Staten Island, where the Marathon starts, and a lot of other places in the region have already endured the high water of Hurricane Sandy.

Now, they’re confronting the hell of the aftermath, with extended power outages, homes destroyed and damaged, significant displacement and widespread disruption.

And ominous gasoline shortages, to boot.

So who needs a Marathon?

Mayor Bloomberg piously insisted to The New York Times, “It’s a great event for New York, and I think for those who were lost, you know, you’ve got to believe they would want us to have an economy and have a city go on for those that they left behind.”

Because the Marathon makes a lot of money for the city, we’re supposed to dismiss the disaster in our midst. How insensitive could he be?

In the dangerous hours before the storm took them, none of the deceased, we’d wager, cared a whit about the Marathon, let alone fervently hoped that the Marathon would take place regardless. Their grieving families surely don’t care. And, to say the least, most of the people around here now are just not in the mood to indulge - at their great inconvenience - the monomaniacal passion of the thousands of runners from around the world for whom this is the Super Bowl.

More important, they need officials’ help and protection, not some grandiose and ultimately frivolous event that diverts emergency services and resources.

Apparently, an overwhelming majority of people agree as an unscientific poll on SILive.com shows.

As of late-day Thursday, some 49.95 percent of 2,088 respondents (1,043) agreed that “Running the Marathon is a disgrace. It is an insult to every New Yorker who has suffered in any way.”

Another 33.14 percent (692 votes) agreed with the statement, “This is typical Bloomberg. Like the time he told us to go a Broadway show hours after a blizzard. Postpone the event for a week or two.”

Just 14.8 percent voted for “Let the Marathon go on. The mayor is right. We need to get our city back to normal.”

And 2.11 percent didn’t care.

You blew it, Mr. Mayor. The Marathon should have been scrubbed the minute you realized the extent of the devastation. Economic activity doesn’t trump simple human decency.